


Movie Night

by heartofstark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Movie Night, Avengers Tower, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Indulgent, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 16:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20028868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstark/pseuds/heartofstark
Summary: Steve and Bucky had been two halves of a whole for the first twenty years of their lives. They'd gravitated together in laughing fits and whispers and in the bathroom of their tiny apartment, Steve sitting on the closed toilet lid while Bucky stitched him up. They moved as two parts of one entity, they were SteveandBucky. But then Bucky Barnes fell off a train in the Alps in May 1943, and Steve Rogers drove a plane into an ice sheet a week later.





	Movie Night

“Hey, _fuck_ you.”

“Anytime, sweetheart,” Bucky leered, straining to hold Clint’s popcorn above his head where he couldn’t reach it. 

“Your old-timey charm won’t work on me, you ass, give me that back. I’ll have you know you’re mocking a disabled person. I’m telling Buzzfeed. I can already see the headlines: “Bucky Barnes: Traitor to the Nation and Ableist to Deaf Man”. Steve shifted to dodge Clint’s leg as he used the couch for leverage and launched himself to reach the bowl. It was a move so uncoordinated that if Steve didn’t know he was just goofing around he would’ve felt compelled to make sure he wasn’t a Skrull or LMD. Clint kicked the back of Bucky’s knee and made a lunge for the bowl, but Bucky recovered too fast and shuffled away. _Earth’s mightiest heroes_, Steve thought, not even trying to wipe off the desperately affectionate look he knew he was wearing__

_ __ _

_ __ _

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said, “that’s me! Known ableist! I have one arm, Clint.”

“Hey! As the guy who made the state-of-the-art prosthetic you’re using right now, I’m more than a little offended at your tone,” Tony added, indignant. He was on the next couch over, tucked comfortably under Thor’s giant arm, looking unbothered by Thor’s chin resting on his head or the fact that he was being used as a teddy bear by a god. Steve let a wave of fondness wash over him at Bucky’s teasing tone and the other’s easy comments and laughter until Nat walked back into the room from the kitchen, two bowls of popcorn in her hands, probably enough to fill his shield.

She handed one to Clint, watching him and Bucky sit immediately, childish scuffle already forgotten. Bucky dropped heavily next to Steve, making up for all the jostling by throwing a warm arm around Steve’s shoulders and saying, “Hey, pal,” in that fond voice he’d been using since they were ten years old. Like he was glad to see him even though they’d only been a few feet apart and not for more than a few minutes.

Clint settled on his other side, readjusting his hearing aids as Nat sat down in front of him on the floor, leaning into his legs. Bruce did the same in front of Thor and Tony, laughing at some comment Tony made about assassins, food fights, and extensive damage to his tower. Steve hadn’t missed the fact that the plush carpet on the floor of the movie room had been added only a few days after their first movie night. He’d bitched incessantly about his teammates sitting on the floor instead of his nice (very expensive!!) furniture, but had the carpet added without comment. It was no secret that they liked to be physically close to each other, especially after tough missions or nightmares. 

Somebody told JARVIS to start the movie, and Steve let the sounds of the movie, his teammates, and the warmth coming from Bucky pressed against his side lull him into a state of calm. Every once in awhile Clint would toss a piece of popcorn into the air and watch Nat tilt her head back to catch it in her mouth without looking from the TV. He couldn’t even imagine the kinds of time you had to spend with a person, the kind of things you’d have to go through, to be so synchronous. 

But he could, couldn’t he? 

Steve and Bucky had been two halves of a whole for the first twenty years of their lives. They’d thought they were brothers until a particularly upsetting day when their parents had sat them down to tell them they were only friends. As if they’d ever been _only_ anything to each other. 

They knew how to pull laughter out of each other better than anyone. Bucky had always known when to slow down and give Steve a minute to breathe when he started to wheeze, and never did it in a way that made Steve prickly and defensive. He found him, beat up and bloody, in every back-alley and parking lot he ever got his ass kicked in. They knew each other inside-out, backward, upside down, and everywhere in between. 

Through their entire childhoods and adult lives, they gravitated together, in laughing fits and whispers and the bathroom of their apartment, Steve sitting on the toilet lid while Bucky stitched him up. They’d had no other friends. Nobody wanted to be friends with sickly little Steve Rogers and therefore nobody wanted to be friends with Bucky Barnes. And that had been okay. They weren’t alone so long as they had each other. They moved as two parts of one entity, they were steveandbucky. It was what made them so good at pulling off pranks as children, and what made them such a strong pair in the war. 

But then Bucky Barnes fell off a train in the Alps in May of 1943, and Steve Rogers drove a plane into an ice sheet a week later. Steve woke up alone, half of himself still frozen in a ravine four thousand miles away. Or so he’d thought. He’d crashed that plane and gone down a hero for his efforts; he didn’t have the heart to tell anyone he’d done it in the desperate hopes he’d see Bucky and his Ma again, and maybe even Erskine. 

Bucky had known, of course. Had spent five minutes reading the official report on Steve’s return from the dead before he’d crossed the room to pull Steve out of the armchair he’d been drawing in and tucked Steve into his arms, let him shove his nose into his shoulder and settle there. “I leave you for a week and you follow me down?” he’d asked. Steve had wrapped his arms around his waist and held him there for longer than he usually allowed himself to. 

As if he could hear Steve’s thoughts, Bucky chose that exact moment to remove his arm from where it was still around him and jam his elbow into his side. Steve folded over himself, winded. “Ow, Buck, what the hell.”

“You were thinking so loud I couldn’t hear the movie, you need to relax,” he said, pulling Steve back in, ruffling a hand over his hair with his metal hand. 

“Alright, alright, message received. Relax, got it,” he said, feeling Bucky melt back into his side. Steve took advantage of his lowered guard and shoved his elbow into the spot beneath his ribs in retaliation, and then dropped his head onto his shoulder to prevent a full fight. There’s no better way to interrupt a relaxing movie night like a couple of hundred pounds of super-soldier play fighting like seven-year-olds. They’d broken more furniture than Steve was comfortable with, no matter what Tony said about not worrying about money.

It had taken a long time for Bucky to be this comfortable with them. When he’d shown up a few months after D.C., he’d remembered almost everything, but he was a little shaky when it came to trusting and relaxation and everyday things that were once so easy. Steve hadn’t expected everything to be just as it had been before they both “died”, but the growing pains were still terrible. It startled Steve every time they weren’t on the same page.

It was like finding that the well-oiled machine he’d depended on his entire life was running much less smoothly. Suddenly, some of the gears had stopped entirely, and others had changed imperceptibly, but enough to cause the system to falter. At breakfast one morning, Tony had told a story that reminded Steve of something the commandos had gotten up to during the war, and he’d grinned at Bucky. He’d looked back at him with a confused tilt to his smile and shook his head a little. Steve deflated visibly, and he knew it. 

They'd lived in each other’s pockets forever, and then they’d spent four years, or seventy, apart. 

The thought of Bucky not remembering all those nights they spent, faces close, shining from the light of their bright flashlights in the dark under scratchy blankets; it made Steve feel like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. He reached up and curled his fingers around Bucky’s wrist, a little wary about his train of thought, and smiled when Bucky gave him a little shake in acknowledgment. For now, he had Bucky close at his side, in life and at present. His whole team was within reach, uninjured, laughing, _happy_ even. Steve took a deep breath, let it out, and felt more anchored in this century than he had ever hoped to feel. Felt like maybe things would turn out just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly self-indulgent, but the idea of the two of them living out of each other's pockets, being forced apart, and then put back together as two different people and the growing pains that would come with that is really interesting and heartbreaking to me and if anyone shows interest I would happily write more about it.  
Thanks for reading! Leave a kudos if you liked it!


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